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Ray Hanania Admonishes And Lectures Palestinians

August 28, 2017

Disgraced Palestinian-American Zionist Ray Hanania is at it again. As usual, Hanania’s opinion pieces, if they can be called that, are incoherent and indecipherable. In his latest drivel in print form, the Ikhras Shoe-Of-The-Month award winner admonishes Palestinians about their violence and offers them an unsolicited lecture on his comic book version of International Law.

“Throw away your knives and buy a book on international law…not one Palestinian effort has been made to use the rule of law to achieve justice. Instead, individual Palestinians have turned to injustice, through violence and crime…We are not going to win Jerusalem by hiding knives in our pockets and randomly murdering Israelis, whether they are civilians or in police or military uniform.”

In what appears to be an effort to underscore his ignorance of the law, Hanania continues with the following:

“It is not justice to murder another human being solely because they wear a uniform of oppression.”

And just in case the reader is left with any lingering doubt as to Hanania’s total and complete ignorance of International Law, he goes on to add the following:

“If the uniformed Israeli oppressors are not using violence to inflict harm on Palestinians, Palestinians cannot simply randomly inflict violence on Israelis.”

Hanania’s seeming belief in the efficacy of International Law as a tool of liberation is as clouded and confused as his understanding of the law itself. Far from being an act of “random murder” or a “crime”, the Palestinian right to resist is enshrined in both the customs and treaties of international law. But what’s even more important than its legality is the morality of Palestinian resistance. It is also undisputed that this moral and legal right to resist occupation belongs to all Palestinians collectively and individually and applies to all of occupied Palestine from the river to the sea.

Let’s put aside Hanania’s brief and comical overview of International Law and the obvious fact that settler-colonialism and military occupation is violent by definition. Ray is actually arguing that once the armed colonial-settlers arrived on the shores of Palestine, ethnically cleansed the country through a systematic campaign of mass violence and succeeded (albeit temporarily) in establishing a colonial military occupation, the occupied and colonized indigenous Arab population does not have a right to resist their occupation and colonization.

For this idiot, so long as Zionist occupation soldiers and police and armed squatters are not actually stealing land, shooting, bombing or shelling at the moment, Palestinians have no right to self-defense and resistance. This is rather strange even for someone as reprehensible and ignorant as Hanania. Think about that: armed colonial settlers arrive in your town or city, violently evict you and your family from your land, and expel you from the country of which you are the original and sole owner. As far as Hanania is concerned, the landowner, who now lives under military occupation and/or in a refugee camp, is not entitled to return to his land and home and forcibly remove the armed squatters or target the occupation army. And any Palestinian attempt to retrieve his/her land and evict the occupier becomes a crime.

Hanania then returns to a staple of Zionist propaganda and throws in the stale and racist cliché about Palestinians needing to prove they are capable of living in peace.

“We need to shatter the false perception that we reject peace, and prove to the world that we can live in peace in two states, accepting compromise….Palestinians need to show the world that we are realists and are capable of living in peace.”

No Ray, we do not. We do not need to prove to the world that we are “capable of living in peace.” It is Zionists like you that need to prove to Palestinians you are capable of changing and living in peace. It is you that needs to condemn the racist ideology of Zionism and apologize to the Palestinian people. And to prove the sincerity of your apology it must be accompanied by an active commitment to the total dismantlement of the structures and institutions of the usurping Zionist entity and the return of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their homes and lands of origin with full restitution of all their confiscated property in a single, unified, and liberated Palestine.

We do not support a legalistic approach to the Palestine cause, but the role and efficacy of International Law in defeating the imperialist-backed, Zionist colonial project in Palestine is beyond the scope of this discussion and Hanania’s depth of comprehension. The only response to Hanania’s racist tropes and lecture on violence delivered from the comfort and safety of his Midwest American home is Ikhras!